Not ranked in google.co.uk

I keep hearing this more and more that Google can’t get it’s co.uk index working correctly, well every case I have seen so far is down to a newish Google Penalty one I call the Upstream Penalty.. oh here is my theory, we know that google can add penalties on pretty much anything they want.

a site ranks for everything except for 3 keywords ( those keywords that drove 80% of your sales and traffic ) or a hand removal of a page or 2 ( those pages that drove 50% of your sales and traffic ) or all keyterms or pages that they have indexed push down +30, 60 or 90 places ( btw they started randomising the numbers ages ago 😉 )

So what’s Dave’s Upstream Penalty? This is where it’s gets to be fun and took me a while to figure out. If like me you’re in the UK and you get 80% of your traffic for google.co.uk wouldn’t it make the SEO’s life a little harder if they just add the penalties to a Geo Index. The common cause by the way is a link buying penalty, if they identify the purchased links they just kill you in the index that supplies you your leads and sales for those Keywords. But how I hear you cry, well the more data we give google the easier it becomes for them, there used to be one hope “the users Upstream Data” I remember April 25, 2007 Matt Cutts getting all bent out of shape when Google was attacked on the privacy and I quote .

Another point is that your ISP has a superset of data that Google has, because everything you do passes through your ISP. So your ISP may have much more detailed records about places where you go on the net, plus they have a verified identity with something like a credit card, and they actually know which IPs you're on. With Google if you clear cookies and turn off your cable modem for a minute or two, you'll usually get a completely new IP address. Google would have no idea that it's the same person, but your ISP would still know, because they assigned the new IP address. Many of the questions about privacy I see are interesting because ISPs have more data than Google does, but you rarely see people ask questions about ISPs, even though at least some ISPs do sell clickstream data.

As an employee who has worked at Google since 2000, I've seen how carefully we treat issues of privacy. If you haven't read my declaration from the DOJ case last year, I'd recommend checking it out. Pages 11 & 12 are good reading, for example. So my personal belief would be that if privacy is important to you, Google should not be your biggest concern for two reasons. First, I believe Google does more to protect our users' privacy than any other major search engine. Second, I believe other companies such as ISPs have a superset of the data that Google has, plus they have verified payment/identity, plus they know which IP addresses you are on, even if you switch IP addresses.

Google’s proposed arrangement with network providers, internally called OpenEdge, would place Google servers directly within the network of the service providers, according to documents reviewed by the Journal. The setup would accelerate Google’s service for users. Google has asked the providers it has approached not to talk about the idea, according to people familiar with the plans.

Asked about OpenEdge, Google said only that other companies such as Yahoo and Microsoft could strike similar deals if they desired. But Google’s move, if successful, would give it an advantage available to very few.

I guess that will be the end of net neutrality, I can see the lines been drawn already and which could open the doors of Microsoft to release it’s own weapons of mass destruction, they still own the desktop landscape and never forget that, Google is just a website if China can redirect or block Google, so can Microsoft well at least it’s ad serving side. A quick update to IE and a simple question like… Some Ad delivery systems may damage or infect you computer would you like to block all ads.? people would do it IMO

David Naylor

David Naylor, more commonly known as DaveN, started working in the SEO industry in it's infancy, starting with three major corporations releasing their database driven data, creating internal link structures and improving usability.

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17 Comments

Andy Blackburn

Best post in a while Dave, thoroughly good read.

The whole net neutrality scenario interests me a hell of a lot… and unfortunately it won’t be long before we start seeing some of the effects. What happens after that? Things go underground, alternatives will appear and life will go on…

Jim McNelis - http://ditoweb.com

Mostly nonsense if you ask me. Were you talking about imaginary penalties that explain away a recent client’s slip in rankings or talking about net neutrality? I guess the common theme here is “it’s Google’s fault”?

DaveN

@Jim McNelis

“it’s Google’s fault” hell no it’s the webmasters for buying links

“imaginary penalties” I wish they where but it’s was a link profile that took a site out of the UK index and it’s still in the .com that has been confirmed to me.

PULSE

Upstream Penalty sounds a bit tenious. Could you explain a bit more, or in a different way. In simple language 😉

The ISP issue! Man that sucks. If Google tab into that its 1 step closer to them offering personalised SERPS and so on. Plus all the privacy issues.

Henry

Good post.

Do you have any examples of a .co.uk site that ranks in google.com and not in google.co.uk. I have seen this problem with .com and .net sites, but I assumed it was a geolocation issue and certainly not a penalty.

If I saw a .co.uk suffering from the effects you say I would be willing to consider that it is a type of penalty.

Jim

“if they identify the purchased links they just kill you in the index that supplies you your leads and sales for those Keywords”…

Does that mean I can affect my competitors sites rankings by “purchasing” dodgy links for them?

Daniel Mcskelly - http://www.bronco.co.uk

@Jim: absolutely. TLA, TNX and other on-radar networks can do the job, though it might take a bit of trial and error to find trigger sites. Hang around shadier areas of the internet and you’ll be offered links from “silver bullet” sites which will seriously taint even the whitest of link profiles.

Of course you’re almost always better getting to #1 by having a solid long term strategy for your own site rather than messing with competitors, but if you want to play really dirty…

Jim

@Daniel… surely this makes a mockery out of google’s whole ranking system? I mean what’s the point of spending months of hard work doing ethical seo on your site, if someone’s gonna come along and point a couple of dodgy links to it and get it blasted? This is something that is completely out of a webmaster’s control. I wonder what Matt Cutts would have to say about this…

Daniel Mcskelly - http://www.bronco.co.uk

If you contacted the SQ team pointing out the dodgy links and explaining you had no idea where they came from I imagine they’d be able to discount them for you, so long as your history and IBL profile were clean apart from those.

The thing is how many site owners are going to know they should do that? Hell, I’ve spoken to SEOs who wouldn’t know how to spot or deal with that.

webmojo (Steve Morris) - from tweetback

google may know more about you then you think, google may be linking up with ISP and gathering info http://bit.ly/4hKa

PULSE

The truth is that sites can get blasted out the serps in 48 hours. There are actually companies out there who offer it as a service. I am sure Google / Matt Cutts are aware of this and taking steps to fix the problem. It would be nice to get a comment on this issue from Google though and to understand exactly the situation from their POV.

DaveN

Yer, Pulse I sure that Matt will be along to tell us all the banning methods they use 😉

Dave

Coldfusion Developer - http://www.beetrootstreet.com

I’ve seen how powerful the information that’s aggregated can be… I had a demo of Hitwise who use this data so you can see not only where your visitors come from (which you can do with any stats package) but where they go after they’ve been to your site.

In addition, what keywords the use to get to competitors sites – either Adwords or natural search terms… Very cool stuff.. Shame it’s about £12k a year to licence.

Emily

I have this exact problem. Site is appearing higher in google.com and has been bounced way down the results in google.co.uk. In local biz centre, webmaster tools and analytics the geographical location is set to UK. Keywords, title, tags include UK. It’s bizarre.